1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a remote-control method for remote-controlling the operation of an audio reproducing apparatus by a wireless terminal, and to a wireless terminal and an audio reproducing apparatus, to which the remote-control method is applied.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, various types of audio reproducing apparatus, such as a portable audio player, have been developed. In usual cases, the control of the portable audio player is executed using a remote controller, which is attached to a headphone cable that is connected to the portable audio player.
The remote controller is used in such a state that the remote controller is fixed to, for example, a breast pocket of the user by means of a clip, etc. In order to perform operations for reproduction controls such as play, stop, fast forward, rewind and song skip, the user has to move the hand to the breast pocket and to operate the remote controller. When the user is to operate the remote controller, such a situation may arise that the headphone cable is erroneously pulled and removed from the ear.
To solve this problem, a remote control system, which controls the portable audio player by wireless signals, has recently begun to be developed (see, e.g. Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-87874). In the system disclosed in KOKAI 2003-87874, a mobile phone is used as a remote controller, and the reproduction operation of the portable audio player is controlled by wireless signals from the mobile phone.
In the meantime, a portable audio player with a large-capacity storage medium has recently been developed. This necessitates a function for efficiently select audio data to be reproduced, from many data that are stored in the storage medium.
In the system disclosed in KOKAI 2003-87874, however, no consideration is given to the user interface for selecting audio data that is to be reproduced by the portable audio player.
In usual cases, the display on the audio reproducing apparatus such as the portable audio player is too small in screen size to display sufficient information. Since the screen size of the display of the mobile phone is relatively large, it is necessary to realize a novel interface that can make advantageous use of this screen size.